INNOCENT BEACH

We decide to spend a sunny day at St.Ives. We lunch at the Porthminster Beach Cafe. Don't laugh - this is no Walls ice-cream candy-floss caff, but an excellent French-style bistro with real seaside atmosphere; outside eating under the awnings if you like, excellent food, and delightful waitresses. Replete with crab linguine and white wine, we stroll along overlooking the beach, and settle on a comfortable seat.

The sand is platinum dust, the sea a sheet of lapis lazuli. In the distance we can see To The Lighthouse; round the corner, a real hurdygurdy softly plays pompitty seaside music. On the beach young fathers encourage their sons to paddle in the slurping waves, or to build impregnable sand-castles, and young wives recline and chat happily in their absence. It all has a wonderful sense of primal innocence, as in that never-never land of M. Hulot's holiday. Why do we feel that it is an epiphany from another world?

And then we realise. It is term-time; all the adolescents - well, nearly all - are safely in their cages. This is a world without (hateful phrase!) teenagers. What a sad thing it is that we should feel this. We have over the years known many youngsters at this time in their lives, and very enjoyable these encounters have been. But herd them into large groups, stuff their minds with yoof magazines and pop, encourage them to drink with no education in how to do it, lead them to think of drugs as a giggle, and they are capable of noisily destroying some of life's most precious experiences.

I ask myself whether I do not exaggerate a minor problem, as old men are inclined to do. Then comes news from the beautiful beaches of Newquay. The life-guards here have been given police powers to act to control drunkenness, drugs, violence, and social disorder among the young. This in some of the most peaceful and satisfying surroundings one could hope to come across in a life's experience. Enough to make you weep.